This was one of the first times I had ever experienced what teamwork felt like.
When I’m not tackling my so-called ‘day job’ (read: Accountancy matters), every other thing I do leads back to fandom.
Because of it, I’ve been making friends, writing stuff, tinkering around with graphics and video in my downtime. I’ve gone to conventions and tried my hand at photography. Heck, even the act of me writing for this website traces back to fandom matters: a fandom friend of mine inadvertently introduced me to The Thing.
Recently, some of my friends got me to run a ship week with them on Tumblr. A ship week is exactly what it sounds like – a week focusing on a specific couple’s relationship (see what I did there?).
The ship my friends and I chose to focus on is something off the anime/yonkoma (four-panel manga) series Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun (GSNK). While this ship isn’t the supposed ‘main’ pairing, it is the number one fan favorite, according to the series’ official fanbook. Yuu Kashima and Masayuki Hori – better known under their couple name HoriKashi, the prince and princess of the Drama Club.
Yes. Respectively. In exactly that order.
Like everything else in GSNK, HoriKashi is fond of taking society’s usual gender roles and playing with them a lot. Kashima is the charming ‘prince’ who flirts her way through the ladies. Hori is the responsible club president who does his best to support her, and he has the biggest tsundere tendencies.
Not all people approve of this ship, though. One of GSNK’s recurring jokes was that Hori would do anything to keep Kashima in line when she slacks off, even resorting to brute force. While that eventually petered out in recent chapters, many still don’t approve of that particular brand of slapstick humor. But that’s a story for next time.
So once upon a time, a group of friends loved seeing two fictional characters obliviously fall in love and thought the world needed more of it. Love does not make the world go ‘round, though – it was harder than it seemed to be. Or maybe that was just on my end, since I worked off a completely different time zone than everyone else. But I learned quickly enough that these hurdles are nothing to a bunch of teammates who’ll support you along the way.
In fact, I’d even go as far as to say this: after all the years I’d spent dreading group projects in school, this was one of the first times I had ever experienced what teamwork felt like.
We managed to pull together a blog, a whole bunch of advertising graphics, and a bunch of info posts that definitely got our fandom’s attention. In that one week, we got a turnout of 300 followers and a lot of quality posts.
Not so bad, for something thought up by friends who got bored ‘cuz their ship tag stopped getting new posts on it.
Working on HoriKashi Week brought in new life to our love for our favorite pairing, and as long as we’ve made other people feel that way, too, we’ll always consider this event to be our unequivocal success.
Article by Trish
Art by Danielle
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Trish is an accountancy grad with a fic-writing habit. She's older than she seems to be at first glance (don't let the height fool you), tends to go rambling off at the worst of times, and can't really see the appeal of consistent sleep patterns. Save for a one-time stint at her high school paper, The Thing is her first foray into non-fanfic-related publication. She has a twitter account, @postscriptress, where she spoils her own writing and re-familiarizes herself with her third language.
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